Halloween 2020 is looking a bit different from other years, isn’t it? Here in Ohio we’re being discouraged from having Halloween parties or getting together with people we aren’t around much and it’s all because of the Covid-19 virus. Should you take a chance on taking your family to a party? What about trick or treating? Is it safe? For those of you looking for a way to stay home with your kiddos but still let them have a fun time, I created Halloween-Party-in-a-Box. We don’t live close to our grandkids and in the interest of keeping everyone healthy, we won’t be seeing them this year at Halloween. But I wanted to do something to help them still enjoy this crazy holiday. Maybe you can use some of these ideas for your own celebration.
Let’s start off with coloring pages. There are quite a few free coloring pages that you can find on the internet. I just “Googled” “coloring pages” and found some cute free ones that I printed out for the grandkids. I added some new crayons or colored pencils and ta dah, there’s one activity.
Walmart had lots of odds and ends of Halloween fun for a low price so I found it fairly easy to come up with things for a party. Glow bracelets, for example. Halloween is all about being spooky and doing things in the dark so glow bracelets fit right in. You can get 8 glow bracelets for $.98.
Decorating a small paper bag with Halloween stickers and anything else they’d like to draw on, makes up activity #2. I found a pack of Halloween pencils so I threw some of those in too.
In order to keep the items for each activity all together in the same place, I used quart and gallon sized zip plastic bags.
Activity #3 is decorating pumpkin cookies. Yum! I found a box of 16 cookies with icing and sprinkles which I shared between 2 sets of grandkids.
I divided the sprinkles into 2 small containers and purchased 2 extra small tubes of icing gel so that each group had 3 colors to decorate with…orange, green and black. Again, I put everything for this project in a zip plastic bag and wrote on the bag what the project is.
If you’re having cookies to eat, you need something Halloween-y to eat them on, right?
Halloween colored crazy straws will make drinking more fun too. 😉
Some tiny Halloween puzzles will be fun to put together for activity #4.
If you want to make it more interesting, have the kids race to see who can get their puzzle together first. I think they are cute!
I found tiny pumpkins in a clearance sale and decided to add in some markers for a drawing faces on a pumpkin activity. (#5)
Activity #6 is the grand finale with a “Wrap a Mummy” game. All you need is some toilet paper. 🙂 There are different ways to play this game so pick the one that fits your family best. If you have enough people, divide into 2 teams and divide the toilet paper rolls between the 2 teams. Pick someone to be the mummy and the rest of the team wraps them in the toilet paper. The winning team is the one with the best looking mummy. (Remember to leave eyes and mouths uncovered for breathing and seeing where they are walking!) This could be extra fun if the mummies are mom and dad and the kids are doing the wrapping. Another version could be if all the kids become mummies. After they are all wrapped up, they could have fun walking around with their arms out in front of them, making spooky noises! 😉 (And probably chasing their siblings or parents!)
I included a little note to the grandkids that is on the top of everything when they open the box.
One little tip I have is if you are sending the Halloween-party-in-a-box to kids that you don’t see often or are young little munchkins, you might include a picture of yourself to help them know who sent them their box of fun. Grandma and Grandpa, this would be a great thing to do if mom or dad is feeling stressed out and out of time before Halloween…you could offer to take care of the Halloween party this year and show up with your Halloween-Party-in-a-Box all ready to go. 🙂 (Depending on your situation, of course.) I hope these suggestions will help you still have a great Halloween 2020!
The Kids Niche 